The Land of Contrasts Part 2

The way in which an expression such as "Ladies' Cabin" is understood in the United States has always seemed to me very typical of the position of the gentler s.e.x in that country. In England, when we see an inscription of that kind, we a.s.sume that the enclosure referred to is for ladies _only_. In America, unless the "only" is emphasized, the "Ladies' Drawing Room" or the "Ladies' Waiting Room" extends its hospitality to all those of the male s.e.x who are ready to behave as gentlemen and temporarily forego the delights of tobacco. Thus half of the male pa.s.sengers of the United States journey, as it were, under the aegis of woman, and think it no shame to be enclosed in a box labelled with her name.

Put roughly, what chiefly strikes the stranger in the American woman is her candour, her frankness, her hail-fellow-well-met-edness, her apparent absence of consciousness of self or of s.e.x, her spontaneity, her vivacity, her fearlessness. If the observer himself is not of a specially refined or delicate type, he is apt at first to misunderstand the cameraderie of an American girl, to see in it suggestions of a possible coa.r.s.eness of fibre. If a vain man, he may take it as a tribute to his personal charms, or at least to the superior claims of a representative of old-world civilisation. But even to the obtuse stranger of this character it will ultimately become obvious--as to the more refined observer _ab initio_--that he can no more (if as much) dare to take a liberty with the American girl than with his own countrywoman. The plum may appear to be more easily handled, but its bloom will be found to be as intact and as ethereal as in the jealously guarded hothouse fruit of Europe. He will find that her frank and charming companionability is as far removed from masculinity as from coa.r.s.eness; that the points in which she differs from the European lady do not bring her nearer either to a man on the one hand, or to a common woman on the other. He will find that he has to readjust his standards, to see that divergence from the best type of woman hitherto known to him does not necessarily mean deterioration; if he is of an open and susceptible mind, he may even come to the conclusion that he prefers the transatlantic type!

Unless his lines in England have lain in _very_ pleasant places, the intelligent Englishman in enjoying his first experience of transatlantic society will a.s.suredly be struck by the sprightliness, the variety, the fearless individuality of the American girl, by her power of repartee, by the quaint appositeness of her expressions, by the variety of her interests, by the absence of undue deference to his masculine dignity. If in his newly landed innocence he ventures to compliment the girl he talks with on the purity of her English, and a.s.sumes that she differs in that respect from her companions, she will patriotically repel the suggested accusation of her countrywomen by a.s.suring him, without the ghost of a smile, "that she has had special advantages, inasmuch as an English missionary had been stationed near her tribe." If she prefers Martin Tupper to Shakespeare, or Strauss to Beethoven, she will say so without a tremor. Why should she hypocritically subordinate her personal instincts to a general theory of taste? Her independence is visible in her very dress; she wears what she thinks suits her (and her taste is seldom at fault), not merely what happens to be the fas.h.i.+onable freak of the moment. What Englishman does not shudder when he remembers how each of his womankind--the comely and the homely, the short and the long, the stout and the lean--at once a.s.sumed the latest form of hat, apparently utterly oblivious to the question of whether it suited her special style of beauty or not? Now, an American girl is not built that way.

She wishes to be in the fas.h.i.+on just as much as she can; but if a special item of fas.h.i.+on does not set her off to advantage, she gracefully and courageously resigns it to those who can wear it with profit. But honour where honour is due! The English girl generally shows more sense of fitness in the dress for walking and travelling; she, consciously or unconsciously, realises that adaptability for its practical purpose is essential in such a case.

The American girl, as above said, strikes one as individual, as varied. In England when we meet a girl in a ball-room we can generally--not always--"place" her after a few minutes' talk; she belongs to a set of which you remember to have already met a volume or two. In some continental countries the patterns in common use seem reduced to three or four. In the United States every new girl is a new sensation. Society consists of a series of surprises. Expectation is continually piqued. A and B and C do not help you to induce D; when you reach Z you _may_ imagine you find a slight trace of reincarnation.

Not that the surprises are invariably pleasant. The very force and self-confidence of the American girl doubly and trebly underline the undesirable. Vulgarity that would be stolid and stodgy in Middles.e.x becomes blatant and aggressive in New York.

The American girl is not hampered by the feeling of cla.s.s distinction, which has for her neither religious nor historical sanction. The English girl is first the squire's daughter, second a good churchwoman, third an English subject, and fourthly a woman. Even the best of them cannot rise wholly superior to the all-pervading, and, in its essence, vulgarising, superst.i.tion that some of her fellow-creatures are not fit to come between the wind and her n.o.bility. Those who reject the theory do so by a self-conscious effort which in itself is crude and a strain. The American girl is, however, born into an atmosphere of unconsciousness of all this, and, unless she belongs to a very narrow coterie, does not reach this point of view either as believer or antagonist. This endues her, at her best, with a sweet and subtle fragrance of humanity that is, perhaps, unique. Free from any sense of inherited or conventional superiority or inferiority, as devoid of the brutality of condescension as of the meanness of toadyism, she combines in a strangely attractive way the charm of eternal womanliness with the latest aroma of a progressive century. It is, doubtless, this quality that M. Bourget has in view when he speaks of the incomparable delicacy of the American girl, or M. Paul Blouet when he a.s.serts that "you find in the American woman a quality which, I fear, is beginning to disappear in Paris and is almost unknown in London--a kind of spiritualised politeness, a tender solicitude for other people, combined with strong individuality."

There is one type of girl, with whom even the most modest and most moderately eligible of bachelors must be familiar in England, who is seldom in evidence in the United States--she whom the American aborigines might call the "Girl-Anxious-to-be-Married." What right-minded man in any circle of British society has not shuddered at the open pursuit of young Croesus? Have not our novelists and satirists reaped the most ample harvest from the pitiable spectacle and all its results? A large part of the advantage that American society has over English rests in the comparative absence of this phenomenon. Man there does not and cannot bear himself as the cynosure of the female eye; the art of throwing the handkerchief has not been included in his early curriculum. The American dancing man does not dare to arrive just in time for supper or to lounge in the doorway while dozens of girls line the walls in faded expectation of a waltz.

The English girl herself can hardly be blamed for this state of things. She has been brought up to think that marriage is the be-all and end-all of her existence. "For my part," writes the author of "Cecil, the c.o.xcomb," "I never blame them when I see them capering and showing off their little monkey-tricks, for conquest. The fault is none of theirs. It is part of an erroneous system." Lady Jeune expresses the orthodox English position when she a.s.serts flatly that "to deny that marriage is the object of woman's existence is absurd."

The anachronistic survival of the laws of primogeniture and entail practically makes the marriage of the daughter the only alternative for a descent to a lower sphere of society. In the United States the proportion of girls who strike one as obvious candidates for marriage is remarkably small. This _may_ be owing to the art with which the American woman conceals her lures, but all the evidence points to its being in the main an entirely natural and unconscious att.i.tude. The American girl has all along been so accustomed to a.s.sociate on equal terms with the other s.e.x that she naturally and inevitably regards him more in the light of a comrade than of a possible husband. She has so many resources, and is so independent, that marriage does not bound her horizon.

Her position, however, is not one of antagonism to marriage. If it were, I should be the last to commend it. It rather rests on an a.s.surance of equality, on the a.s.sumption that marriage is an honourable estate--a rounding and completing of existence--for man as much as for woman. Nor does it mean, I think, any lack of pa.s.sion and the deepest instincts of womanhood. All these are present and can be wakened by the right man at the right time. Indeed, the very fact that marriage (with or without love) is not incessantly in the foreground of an American girl's consciousness probably makes the awakening all the more deep and tender because comparatively unantic.i.p.ated and unforeseen.

The marriages between American heiresses and European peers do not militate seriously against the above view of American marriage. It cannot be sufficiently emphasised that the doings of a few wealthy people in New York are not characteristic of American civilisation.

The New York _Times_ was entirely right when it said, in commenting upon the frank statement of the bridegroom in a recent alliance of this kind that it had been _arranged_ by friends of both parties: "A few years ago this frankness would have cost him his bride, if his 'friends' had chosen an American girl for that distinction, and even now it would be resented to the point of a rupture of the engagement by most American girls."

The American girl may not be in reality better educated than her British sister, nor a more profound thinker; but her mind is indisputably more agile and elastic. In fact, a slow-going Britisher has to go through a regular course of training before he can follow the rapid transitions of her train of a.s.sociations. She has the happiest faculty in getting at another's point of view and in putting herself in his place. Her imagination is more likely to be over-active than too sluggish. One of the most popular cla.s.ses of the "Society for the Encouragement of Study at Home" is that devoted to imaginary travels in Europe. She is wonderfully adaptable, and makes herself at ease in an entirely strange _milieu_ almost before the transition is complete. Both M. Blouet and M. Bourget notice this, and claim that it is a quality she shares with the Frenchwoman. The wife of a recent President is a stock ill.u.s.tration of it--a girl who was transferred in a moment from what we should call a quiet "middle-cla.s.s" existence to the apex of publicity, and comported herself in the most trying situations with the ease, dignity, unconsciousness, taste, and graciousness of a born princess.

The innocence of the American girl is neither an affectation, nor a prejudiced fable, nor a piece of stupidity. The German woman, quoted by Mr. Bryce, found her American compeer _furchtbar frei_, but she had at once to add _und furchtbar fromm_. "The innocence of the American girl pa.s.ses abysses of obscenity without stain or knowledge." She may be perfectly able to hold her own under any circ.u.mstances, but she has little of that detestable quality which we call "knowing." The immortal Daisy Miller is a charming ill.u.s.tration of this. I used sometimes to get into trouble with American ladies, who "hoped I did not take Daisy Miller as a type of the average American girl," by a.s.suring them that "I did not--that I thought her much too good for that." And in truth there seemed to me a lack of subtlety in the current appreciation of the charming young lady from Schenectady, who is much _finer_ than many readers give her credit for. And on this point I think I may cite Mr. Henry James himself as a witness on my side, since, in a dramatic version of the tale published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (Vol. 51, 1883), he makes his immaculate Bostonian, Mr. Winterbourne, marry Daisy with a full consciousness of all she was and had been. As I understand her, Miss Daisy Miller, in spite of her somewhat unpropitious early surroundings, was a young woman entirely able to appreciate the very best when she met it. She at once recognised the superiority of Winterbourne to the men she had hitherto known, and she also recognised that her "style" was not the "style" of him or of his a.s.sociates. But she was very young, and had all the unreasonable pride of extreme youth; and so she determined not to alter her behaviour one jot or t.i.ttle in order to attract him--nay, with a sort of bravado, she exaggerated those very traits which she knew he disliked. Yet all the time she had the highest appreciation of his most delicate refinements, while she felt also that he ought to see that at bottom she was just as refined as he, though her outward mask was not so elegant. I have no doubt whatever that, as Mrs.

Winterbourne, she adapted herself to her new _milieu_ with absolute success, and yet without loss of her own most fascinating individuality.[8]

The whole atmosphere of the country tends to preserve the spirit of unsuspecting innocence in the American maiden. The function of a chaperon is very differently interpreted in the United States and in England. On one occasion I met in a Pullman car a young lady travelling in charge of her governess. A chance conversation elicited the fact that she was the daughter of a well-known New York banker; and the fact that we had some mutual acquaintances was accepted as all-sufficing credentials for my respectability. We had happened to fix on the same hotel at our destination; and in the evening, after dinner, I met in the corridor the staid and severe-looking _gouvernante_, who saluted me with "Oh, Mr. Muirhead, I have such a headache! Would you mind going out with my little girl while she makes some purchases?" I was a little taken aback at first; but a moment's reflection convinced me that I had just experienced a most striking tribute to the honour of the American man and the social atmosphere of the United States.

The psychological method of suggestive criticism has, perhaps, never been applied with more delicacy of intelligence than in M. Bourget's chapter on the American woman. Each stroke of the pen, or rather each turn of the scalpel, amazes us by its keen penetration. As we at last close the book and meditate on what we have read, it is little by little borne in upon us that though due tribute is paid to the charming traits of the American woman, yet the general outcome of M.

Bourget's a.n.a.lysis is truly d.a.m.natory. If this sprightly, fascinating, somewhat hard and calculating young woman be a true picture of the transatlantic maiden, we may sigh indeed for her lack of the _Ewig Weibliche_. I do not pretend to say where M. Bourget's appreciation is at fault, but that it is false--unaccountably false--in the general impression it leaves, I have no manner of doubt. Perhaps his attention has been fixed too exclusively on the Newport girl, who, it must again be insisted on, is too much impregnated with cosmopolitan _fin de siecle-ism_ to be taken as the American type. Botanise a flower, use the strongest gla.s.ses you will, tear apart and name and a.n.a.lyse,--the result is a catalogue, the flower with its beauty and perfume is not there. So M. Bourget has catalogued the separate qualities of the American woman; as a whole she has eluded his a.n.a.lysis. Perhaps this chapter of his may be taken as an eminent ill.u.s.tration of the limitations of the critical method, which is at times so illuminating, while at times it so utterly fails to touch the heart of things, or, better, the wholeness of things.

Among the most searching tests of the state of civilisation reached by any country are the character of its roads, its minimising of noise, and the position of its women. If the United States does not stand very high on the application of the first two tests, its name a.s.suredly leads all the rest in the third. In no other country is the legal status of women so high or so well secured, or their right to follow an independent career so fully recognised by society at large.

In no other country is so much done to provide for their convenience and comfort. All the professions are open to them, and the opportunity has widely been made use of. Teaching, lecturing, journalism, preaching, and the practice of medicine have long been recognised as within woman's sphere, and she is by no means unknown at the bar.

There are eighty qualified lady doctors in Boston alone, and twenty-five lady lawyers in Chicago. A business card before me as I write reads, "Mesdames Foster & Steuart, Members of the Cotton Exchange and Board of Trade, Real Estate and Stock Brokers, 143 Main Street, Houston, Texas." The American woman, however, is often found in still more unexpected occupations. There are numbers of women dentists, barbers, and livery-stable keepers. Miss Emily Faithful saw a railway pointswoman in Georgia; and one of the regular steamers on Lake Champlain, when I was there, was successfully steered by a pilot in petticoats. There is one profession that is closed to women in the United States--that of barmaid. That professional a.s.sociation of woman with man when he is apt to be in his most animal moods is firmly tabooed in America--all honour to it!

The career of a lady whose acquaintance I made in New York, and whom I shall call Miss Undereast, ill.u.s.trates the possibilities open to the American girl. Born in Iowa, Miss Undereast lost her mother when she was three years old, and spent her early childhood in company with her father, who was a travelling geologist and mining prospector. She could ride almost before she could walk, and soon became an expert shot. Once, when only ten years of age, she shot down an Indian who was in the act of killing a white woman with his tomahawk; and on another occasion, when her father's camp was surrounded by hostile Indians, she galloped out upon her pony and brought relief. "She was so much at home with the shy, wild creatures of the woods that she learned their calls, and they would come to her like so many domestic birds and animals. She would come into camp with wild birds and squirrels on her shoulder. She could la.s.so a steer with the best of them. When, at last, she went to graduate at the State University of Colorado, she paid for her last year's tuition with the proceeds of her own herd of cattle." After graduating at Colorado State University, she took a full course in a commercial college, and then taught school for some time at Denver. Later she studied and taught music, for which she had a marked gift. The next important step brought her to New York, where she gained in a compet.i.tive examination the position of secretary in the office of the Street Cleaning Department. Her linguistic accomplishments (for she had studied several foreign languages) stood her in good stead, and during the illness of her chief she practically managed the department and "bossed" fifteen hundred Italian labourers in their own tongue. Miss Undereast carried on her musical studies far enough to be offered a position in an operatic company, while her linguistic studies qualified her for the post of United States Custom House Inspectress.

Latterly she has devoted her time mainly to journalism and literature, producing, _inter alia_, a guidebook to New York, a novel, and a volume of essays on social topics. It is a little difficult to realise when talking with the accomplished and womanly _litterateur_ that she has been in her day a slayer of Indians and "a mighty huntress before the Lord;" but both the facts and the opportunities underlying them testify in the most striking manner to the largeness of the sphere of action open to the _puella Americana_.

If American women have been well treated by their men-folk, they have n.o.bly discharged their debt. It is trite to refer to the numerous schemes of philanthropy in which American women have played so prominent a part, to allude to the fact that they have as a body used their leisure to cultivate those arts and graces of life which the preoccupation of man has led him too often to neglect. This chapter may well close with the words of Professor Bryce: "No country seems to owe more to its women than America does, nor to owe to them so much of what is best in its social inst.i.tutions and in the beliefs that govern conduct."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Since writing the above I have learned that Mr. W.D. Howells has written of "Daisy Miller" in a similar vein, speaking of her "indestructible innocence and her invulnerable new-worldliness." "It was so plain that Mr. James disliked her vulgar conditions that the very people to whom he revealed her essential sweetness and light were furious that he should have seemed not to see what existed through him."

V

The American Child

The United States has sometimes been called the "Paradise of Women;"

from the child's point of view it might equally well he termed the "Paradise of Children," though the thoughtful observer might be inclined to qualify the t.i.tle by the prefix "Fool's." Nowhere is the child so constantly in evidence; nowhere are his wishes so carefully consulted; nowhere is he allowed to make his mark so strongly on society in general. The difference begins at the very moment of his birth, or indeed even sooner. As much fuss is made over each young republican as if he were the heir to a long line of kings; his swaddling clothes might make a ducal infant jealous; the family physician thinks $100 or $150 a moderate fee for ushering him into the light of day. Ordinary milk is not good enough for him; _sterilised_ milk will hardly do; "_modified_" milk alone is considered fit for this democratic suckling. Even the father is expected to spend hours in patient consultation over his food, his dress, his teething-rings, and his outgoing. He is weighed daily, and his nourishment is changed at once if he is a fraction either behind or ahead of what is deemed a normal and healthy rate of growth. American writers on the care of children give directions for the use of the most complex and time-devouring devices for the proper preparation of their food, and seem really to expect that mamma and nurse will go through with the prescribed juggling with pots and pans, cylinders and lamps.

A little later the importance of the American child is just as evident, though it takes on different forms. The small American seems to consider himself the father of the man in a way never contemplated by the poet. He interrupts the conversation of his elders, he has a voice in every matter, he eats and drinks what seems good to him, he (or at any rate _she_) wears finger-rings of price, he has no shyness or even modesty. The theory of the equality of man is rampant in the nursery (though I use this word only in its conventional and figurative sense, for American children do not confine themselves to their nurseries). You will actually hear an American mother say of a child of two or three years of age: "I can't _induce_ him to do this;"

"She _won't_ go to bed when I tell her;" "She _will_ eat that lemon pie, though I _know_ it is bad for her." Even the public authorities seem to recognise the inherent right of the American child to have his own way, as the following paragraph from the New York _Herald_ of April 8, 1896, will testify:

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, April 7.--The lawn in front of the White House this morning was littered with paper bags, the dyed sh.e.l.ls of eggs, and the remains of Easter luncheon baskets. It is said that a large part of the lawn must be resodded. The children, shut out from their usual romp in the grounds at the back of the mansion, made their way into the front when the sun came out in the afternoon, and gambolled about at will, to the great injury of the rain-soaked turf.

The police stationed in the grounds _vainly endeavored to persuade the youngsters to go away_, and were finally successful only through pretending to be about to close all the gates for the night.

It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that this kind of bringing up hardly tends to make the American child an attractive object to the stranger from without. On the contrary, it is very apt to make the said stranger long strenuously to spank these budding citizens of a free republic, and to send them to bed _instanter_. So much of what I want to say on this topic has been well said by my brother Findlay Muirhead in an article on "The American Small Boy," contributed to the _St. James's Gazette_, that I venture to quote the bulk of that article below.

The American Small Boy

The American small boy is represented in history by the youthful George Was.h.i.+ngton, who suffered through his inability to invent a plausible fiction, and by Benjamin Franklin, whose abnormal simplicity in the purchase of musical instruments has become proverbial. But history is not taken down in shorthand as it occurs, and it sometimes lags a little. The modern American small boy is a vastly different being from either of these transatlantic worthies; at all events his most prominent characteristics, as they strike a stranger, are not ill.u.s.trated in the earlier period of their career.

The peculiarities of young America would, indeed, matter but little to the stranger if young America stayed at home. But young America does not stay at home. It is not necessary to track the American small boy to his native haunts in order to see what he is like. He is very much in evidence even on this side the Atlantic. At certain seasons he circulates in Europe with the facility of the British sovereign; for the American nation cherishes the true nomadic habit of travelling in families, and the small boy is not left behind. He abounds in Paris; he is common in Italy; and he is a drug in Switzerland. He is an element to be allowed for by all who make the Grand Tour, for his voice is heard in every land. On the Continent, during the season, no first-cla.s.s hotel can be said to be complete without its American family, including the small boy. He does not, indeed, appear to "come off" to his full extent in this country, but in all Continental resorts he is a small boy that may be felt, as probably our fellow-countrymen all over Europe are now discovering.

There is little use in attempting to disguise the fact that the subject of the present paper is distinctly disagreeable. There is little beauty in him that we should desire him. He is not only restless himself, but he is the cause of restlessness in others.

He has no respect even for the quiescent evening hour, devoted to cigarettes on the terrace after _table d'hote_, and he is not to be overawed by a look. It is a constant source of wonder to the thoughtfully inclined how the American man is evolved from the American boy; it is a problem much more knotty than the difficulty concerning apple-dumplings which so perplexed "Farmer George." No one need desire a pleasanter travelling companion than the American man; it is impossible to imagine a more disagreeable one than the American boy.

The American small boy is precocious; but it is not with the erudite precocity of the German Heinecken, who at three years of age was intimately acquainted with history and geography ancient and modern, sacred and profane, besides being able to converse fluently in Latin, French, and German. We know, of course, that each of the twenty-two Presidents of the United States gave such lively promise in his youth that twenty-two aged friends of the twenty-two families, without any collusion, placed their hands upon the youthful heads, prophesying their future eminence. But even this remarkable coincidence does not affect the fact that the precocity of the average transatlantic boy is not generally in the most useful branches of knowledge, but rather in the direction of habits, tastes, and opinion. He is not, however, evenly precocious. He unites a taste for jewelry with a pa.s.sion for candy. He combines a penetration into the motives of others with an infantile indifference to exposing them at inconvenient times. He has an adult decision in his wishes, but he has a youthful shamelessness in seeking their fulfilment. One of his most exasperating peculiarities is the manner in which he querulously harps upon the single string of his wants. He sits down before the refusal of his mother and shrilly besieges it. He does not desist for company. He does not wish to behave well before strangers. He desires to have his wish granted; and he knows he will probably be allowed to succeed if he insists before strangers. He is distinguished by a brutal frankness, combined with a cynical disregard for all feminine ruses. He not seldom calls up the blush of shame to the cheek of scheming innocence; and he frequently crucifies his female relatives. He is generally an adept in discovering what will most annoy his family circle; and he is perfectly unscrupulous in avenging himself for all injuries, of which he receives, in his own opinion, a large number. He has an accurate memory for all promises made to his advantage, and he is relentless in exacting payment to the uttermost farthing. He not seldom displays a singular ingenuity in interpreting ambiguous terms for his own behoof. A youth of this kind is reported to have demanded (and received) eight apples from his mother, who had bribed him to temporary stillness by the promise of a few of that fruit, his ground being that the Scriptures contained the sentence, "Wherein few, that is, eight, souls were saved by water."

The American small boy is possessed, moreover, of a well-nigh invincible _aplomb_. He is not impertinent, for it never enters into his head to take up the position of protesting inferiority which impertinence implies. He merely takes things as they come, and does not hesitate to express his opinion of them. An American young gentleman of the mature age of ten was one day overtaken by a fault. His father, more in sorrow than in anger, expressed his displeasure. "What am I to do with you, Tommy? What am I to do with you?" "I have no suggestions to offer, sir," was the response of Tommy, thus appealed to. Even in trying circ.u.mstances, even when serious misfortune overtakes the youthful American, his _aplomb_, his confidence in his own opinion, does not wholly forsake him. Such a one was found weeping in the street. On being asked the cause of his tears, he sobbed out in mingled alarm and indignation: "I'm lost; mammy's lost me; I _told_ the darned thing she'd lose me." The recognition of his own liability to be lost, and at the same time the recognition of his own superior wisdom, are exquisitely characteristic. They would be quite incongruous in the son of any other soil. In his intercourse with strangers this feeling exhibits itself in the complete self-possession and _sang-froid_ of the youthful citizen of the Western Republic. He scorns to own a curiosity which he dare not openly seek to satisfy by direct questions, and he puts his questions accordingly on all subjects, even the most private and even in the case of the most reverend strangers. He is perfectly free in his remarks upon all that strikes him as strange or reprehensible in any one's personal appearance or behaviour; and he never dreams that his victims might prefer not to be criticised in public. But he is quick to resent criticism on himself, and he shows the most perverted ingenuity in embroiling with his family any outsider who may rashly attempt to restrain his ebullitions. He is, in fact, like the Scottish thistle: no one may meddle with him with impunity.

It is better to "never mind him," as one of the evils under the sun for which there is no remedy.

Probably this development of the American small boys is due in great measure to the absorption of their fathers in business, which necessarily surrenders the former to a too undiluted "regiment of women." For though Thackeray is unquestionably right in estimating highly the influence of refined feminine society upon youths and young men, there is no doubt that a small boy is all the better for contact with some one whose physical prowess commands his respect. Some allowance must also be made for the peevishness of boys condemned to prolonged railway journeys, and to the confinement of hotel life in cities and scenes in which they are not old enough to take an interest. They would, doubtless, be more genial if they were left behind at school.

The American boy has no monopoly of the characteristics under consideration. His little sister is often his equal in all departments. Miss Marryat tells of a little girl of five who appeared alone in the _table d'hote_ room of a large and fas.h.i.+onable hotel, ordered a copious and variegated breakfast, and silenced the timorous misgivings of the waiter with "I guess I pay my way." At another hotel I heard a similar little minx, in a fit of infantile rage, address her mother as "You nasty, mean, old crosspatch;" and the latter, who in other respects seemed a very sensible and intelligent woman, yielded to the storm, and had no words of rebuke. I am afraid it was a little boy who in the same way called his father a "black-eyed old skunk;"

but it might just as well have been a girl.

While not a.s.serting that all American children are of this brand, I do maintain that the sketch is fairly typical of a very large cla.s.s--perhaps of all except those of exceptionally firm and sensible parents. The strangest thing about the matter is, however, that the fruit does not by any means correspond to the seed; the wind is sown, but the whirlwind is not reaped. The unendurable child does not necessarily become an intolerable man. By some mysterious chemistry of the American atmosphere, social or otherwise, the horrid little minx blossoms out into a charming and womanly girl, with just enough of independence to make her piquant; the cross and dyspeptic little boy becomes a courteous and amiable man. Some sort of a moral miracle seems to take place about the age of fourteen or fifteen; a violent dislocation interrupts the natural continuity of progress; and, presto! out springs a new creature from the modern cauldron of Medea.

The reason--or at any rate one reason--of the normal att.i.tude of the American parent towards his child is not far to seek. It is almost undoubtedly one of the direct consequences of the circ.u.mambient spirit of democracy. The American is so accustomed to recognise the essential equality of others that he sometimes carries a good thing to excess.

This spirit is seen in his dealings with underlings of all kinds, who are rarely addressed with the bluntness and brusqueness of the older civilisations. Hence the father and mother are apt to lay almost too much stress on the separate and individual ent.i.ty of their child, to shun too scrupulously anything approaching the violent coercion of another's will. That the results are not more disastrous seems owing to a saving quality in the child himself. The characteristic American shrewdness and common sense do their work. A badly brought up American child introduced into a really well-regulated family soon takes his cue from his surroundings, adapts himself to his new conditions, and sheds his faults as a snake its skin. The whole process may tend to increase the individuality of the child; but the cost is often great, the consequences hard for the child itself. American parents are doubtless more familiar than others with the plaintive remonstrance: "Why did you not bring me up more strictly? Why did you give me so much of my own way?" The present type of the American child may be described as one of the experiments of democracy; that he is not a necessary type is proved by the by no means insignificant number of excellently trained children in the United States, of whom it has never been a.s.serted that they make any less truly democratic citizens than their more pampered playmates.

The idea of establis.h.i.+ng summer camps for schoolchildren may not have originated in the United States--it was certainly put into operation in Switzerland and France several years ago; but the most characteristic and highly organised inst.i.tution of the kind is the George Junior Republic at Freeville, near Ithaca, in the State of New York, and some account of this attempt to recognise the "rights of children," and develop the political capacity of boys and girls, may form an appropriate ending to this chapter. The republic was established by Mr. William R. George, in 1895. It occupies a large tent and several wooden buildings on a farm forty-eight acres in extent. In summer it accommodates about two hundred boys and girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen; and about forty of these remain in residence throughout the year. The republic is self-governing, and its economic basis is one of honest industry.

Every citizen has to earn his living, and his work is paid for with the tin currency of the republic. Half of the day is devoted to work, the other half to recreation. The boys are employed in farming and carpentry; the girls sew, cook, and so on. The rates of wages vary from 50 cents to 90 cents a day according to the grade of work.

Ordinary meals cost about 10 cents, and a night's lodging the same; but those who have the means and the inclination may have more sumptuous meals for 25 cents, or board at the "Waldorf" for about $4 (16s.) a week. As the regular work offered to all is paid for at rates amply sufficient to cover the expenses of board and lodging, the idle and improvident have either to go without or make up for their neglect by overtime work. Those who save money receive its full value on leaving the republic, in clothes and provisions to take back to their homes in the slums of New York. Some boys have been known to save $50 (10) in the two months of summer work. The republic has its own legislature, court-house, jail, schools, and the like. The legislature has two branches. The members of the lower house are elected by ballot weekly, those of the senate fortnightly. Each grade of labour elects one member and one senator for every twelve const.i.tuents. Offences against the laws of the republic are stringently dealt with, and the jail, with its bread-and-water diet, is a by no means pleasant experience. The police force consists of thirteen boys and two girls; the office of "cop," with its wages of 90 cents a day, is eagerly coveted, but cannot be obtained without the pa.s.sing of a stiff civil service examination.

So far this interesting experiment is said by good authorities to have worked well. It is not a socialistic or Utopian scheme, but frankly accepts existing conditions and tries to make the best of them. It is not by any means merely "playing at house." The children have to do genuine work, and learn habits of real industry, thrift, self-restraint, and independence. The measures discussed by the legislature are not of the debating society order, but actually affect the personal welfare of the two hundred citizens. It has, for example, been found necessary to impose a duty of twenty-five per cent. "on all stuff brought in to be sold," so as to protect the native farmer.

Female suffrage has been tried, but did not work well, and was discarded, largely through the votes of the girls themselves.

The possible disadvantages connected with an experiment of this kind easily suggest themselves; but since the "precocity" of the American child is a recognised fact, it is perhaps well that it should be turned into such un.o.bjectionable channels.